Need for measuring Effectiveness of the Promotional Program

Promotion
of any product/company is carried out with a distinct objective in mind. Although
companies plan a great promotion strategy, they tend to neglect the most
crucial element of the same. They forget to measure the achievement that is
achieved through the strategy. Every company should remember that measuring the
effectiveness of the promotional program is a critical element in
the promotional planning process. Research allows the marketing manager to
evaluate the performance of specific program elements and provides input
into the next period’s situation analysis. It is a necessary ingredient to
a continuing planning process, yet it is often not carried out. It is
important to determine how well the communications program is working and
to measure this performance against some standards.

Reasons
to measure effectiveness:

·Avoid costly mistakes

·Evaluate alternative strategies

·Increase efficiency in general

·Determine if objectives are achieved

Some of
the critics have also pointed out some reasons for not to measure the
effectiveness. They are as follows:

·Cost of measurement

·Research problems

·Disagreement on what to test

·Objections of creative

·Time

All the above arguments possess weak logic and can
be negated easily. The cost of measurement could be negated when compared to
the loss that is caused if the advertisement is unsuccessful. Similarly the
research problem can be negated by having a presence of a proper plan for the
evaluation and measurement. The disagreement can also be taken care by the same.

After the above discussion we can come to a
conclusion that the measurement will provide us with extra benefits only.
Hence, adopting the process would merge batter with the company’s strategy.

In order to understand the complete mechanism we
will try to answer the complete mechanism using the framework of:

·What

·When

·Where

·How

What to measure:

Marketers need to determine how the communications
process is being affected by the different promotion programs. Other decisions
made in the promotional planning process must also be evaluated. But Primarily
the components of the communication plan is to be evaluated. The components
are:

·Source Factors

·Message variables

·Media strategies

·Budget decisions

Where
to measure:

Test Measures can be classified
on the basis of when they are conducted.

·Pre-testing

·Post-testing

The testing methods can be further classified as:

Where
to measure:

In addition to when to test the
managers need to take decision about the place where the test should take
place. Ideally the test is taken at two places:

·Laboratory

·Field

An important trade-off between
the control the test offers and the realism it offers is made. In the first
place control is high while the latter provides high realism.

How
to measure:

The
first three testing factors were general and designed to establish a basic
understanding of the overall process as well as some key terms. At this stage
it is important to know how these test are conducted. In order to conduct these
tests two primary requirements are :

·Testing
guidelines

·Appropriate
tests

Twenty-one
of the largest U.S. ad agencies have endorsed a set of principles aimed at
“improving the research used in preparing and testing ads, providing a better
creative product for clients, and controlling the cost of TV commercials.”14
This set of nine principles, called PACT (Positioning Advertising Copy
Testing), defines copy testing as research “which is undertaken when a decision
is to be made about whether advertising should run in the marketplace. Whether
this stage utilizes a single test or a combination of tests, its purpose is to
aid in the judgment of specific advertising executions.”15 The nine principles
of good copy testing are shown in Figure below: